In Search of Common Ground
“How can we organise these huge, randomly varied, and diverse things we call human subjects into positions where they can recognise one another for long enough to act together, and thus to take up a position that one of these days might live out and act through as an identity? Identity is at the end, not the beginning, of the paradigm. Identity is what is at stake in political organisation. It isn’t that subjects are there and we just can’t get to them. It is that they don’t know yet that they are subjects of a possible discourse. And that always in every political struggle, since every political struggle is always open, is possible either to win their identification or lose it.”
Stuart Hall, Subjects in History: Making Diasporic Identities (1998)
Marking the Stuart Hall Foundation’s 10th anniversary, our programme theme is titled In Search of Common Ground. Throughout 2025, we invited you to collectively consider the role of difference in broadening the intellectual and creative scope of social justice movements working today.
Professor Stuart Hall argued for a conception of identity which is always in process, perpetually changing in relation with our surroundings. Rather than identities being fixed or inherent, they are subject to the interplay between politics and power, to the ways in which “we are positioned, and position ourselves, within the narratives of the past”1. This way of thinking opens up the possibility to build solidarities with peoples we may not directly encounter, to recognise one another’s political struggles, to stretch our political horizons beyond our personal experiences.
In Search of Common Ground considered Hall’s notion of identity as a profoundly creative proposition, challenging us to come together and build a politics that speaks to the specific moment in which we are working. It invited us to take stock of our situation and find the intersections where our histories and political interests meet. It dared us to build a collective politics that is flexible enough to hold – even if momentarily – the sum of our individual concerns.
Today, right-wing forces are building international solidarities, uniting through common commercial and imperial interests, mainstreaming fascistic politics and consolidating their influence across the globe. How are social justice movements building solidarities today? Throughout the year, we engaged with a range of Stuart Hall texts to explore the following questions: How can difference broaden the scope of progressive movements working today? Where are the intersections at which solidarities are being formed in this moment? And what kinds of historical reference points, political traditions, and ideas are being called upon to confront the present?
Our 2025 programme featured public events, workshops, community film screenings, and conversations dedicated to deepening our understanding of solidarities, how they form across differences, the creative possibilities they hold, and the work needed to build a collective politics capable of bringing a more just world to bear.
1 S. Hall, Cultural Identity and Diaspora (1990)
In Search of Common Ground is supported by Conway Hall, Comic Relief, the Hollick Family Foundation, and the Paul Hamlyn Foundation, with programme partners The Advocacy Academy, Black South West Network, Brixton Community Cinema, CoDE, Hood Futures, Pluto Press, Routledge, Taylor & Francis, Soundings, and Words of Colour.
8th Annual Stuart Hall Public Conversation with Françoise Vergès
Saturday 17th May 2025
Conway Hall, London & Online
For the 8th Annual Stuart Hall Public Conversation, we welcomed political theorist, writer, activist, independent curator and political educator, Prof. Françoise Vergès as the keynote speaker.
Vergès’ keynote, titled ‘There Will Be No Future Without Seizing the Present’, considered how we might think across difference to construct a life-affirming politics in times of poly-crisis. The writer and activist posited that building common ground is building transnational solidarity, and urged against despair: “Let us think defeat as a chapter in the long fight for liberation and freedom.”
The keynote was preceded by a video excerpt from Stuart Hall’s Race, The Floating Signifier (1997) and an introductory address from SHF Executive Director Orsod Malik. After the keynote, Vergès was joined by Mohammed Elnaiem, Director of the Decolonial Centre, for a discussion and audience Q&A which further considered how we might understand Hall’s thinking on “a politics without guarantees”.
Read a transcript of the keynote, discussion and audience Q&A here.
The event also featured the premiere screening of ‘The Audacity of Our Skin’. Featuring poet and essayist Selina Nwulu reading her newly revisited version of the titular work to camera, the filmed performance was shot and edited by videographer Alice Kanako and commissioned by the Stuart Hall Foundation supported by Comic Relief.
Following the event, attendees were invited to congregate at an informal reception, where they discussed ideas with programme contributors and with each other. Plant-based South Asian food catered by Goodness Gracious Feast and drinks from the bar were made available, while Newham Bookshop held a stall with titles related to the programme on offer.
Skin Deep hosted a pop-up library at the back of the hall, continuing their efforts to make space for creative thinking in service of and beyond racial justice. The library of liberatory texts offered attendees the opportunity to relax and flip through back prints of the Skin Deep magazine, pick up their latest issue and delve into their sources of inspiration.
Supported by Comic Relief, the Hollick Family Foundation and the Paul Hamlyn Foundation, in collaboration with Conway Hall, Words of Colour and Pluto Press.
28th July 2025 / Video
Françoise Vergès: There Will Be No Future Without Seizing the Present
28th July 2025 / Video
Françoise Vergès: There Will Be No Future Without Seizing the Present
For the 8th Annual Stuart Hall Public Conversation, the Stuart Hall Foundation welcomed political theorist, writer, activist, independent…
For the 8th Annual Stuart Hall Public Conversation, the Stuart Hall Foundation welcomed political theorist, writer, activist, independent curator and political educator, Prof. Françoise Vergès as the keynote speaker. Taking place on Saturday 17th May at Conway Hall in London and online via livestream broadcast, the event inaugurated our 2025 programme, In Search of Common Ground.
Vergès’ keynote, titled ‘There Will Be No Future Without Seizing the Present’, considered how we might think across difference to construct a life-affirming politics in times of poly-crisis. The writer and activist posited that building common ground is building transnational solidarity, and urged against despair: “Let us think defeat as a chapter in the long fight for liberation and freedom.”
The keynote was preceded by a video excerpt from Stuart Hall’s Race, The Floating Signifier (1997) and an introductory address from SHF Executive Director Orsod Malik. After the keynote, Vergès was joined by Mohammed Elnaiem, Director of the Decolonial Centre, for a discussion and audience Q&A which further considered how we might understand Hall’s thinking on “a politics without guarantees”.
The event also featured the premiere screening of ‘The Audacity of Our Skin’. Featuring poet and essayist Selina Nwulu reading her newly revisited version of the titular work to camera, the filmed performance was shot and edited by videographer Alice Kanako and commissioned by the Stuart Hall Foundation supported by Comic Relief.
Following the event, attendees were invited to congregate at an informal reception, where they discussed ideas with programme contributors and with each other. Plant-based South Asian food catered by Goodness Gracious Feast and drinks from the bar were made available, while Newham Bookshop held a stall with titles related to the programme on offer.
Skin Deep hosted a pop-up library at the back of the hall, continuing their efforts to make space for creative thinking in service of and beyond racial justice. The library of liberatory texts offered attendees the opportunity to relax and flip through back prints of the Skin Deep magazine, pick up their latest issue and delve into their sources of inspiration.
Read a transcript of the event recording.
View photography from the event.
Supported by Comic Relief, the Hollick Family Foundation and the Paul Hamlyn Foundation, in collaboration with Conway Hall, Words of Colour and Pluto Press.
28th May 2025 / Images
8th Annual Stuart Hall Public Conversation with Françoise Vergès (photos)
By: Christopher Andreou
28th May 2025 / Images
8th Annual Stuart Hall Public Conversation with Françoise Vergès (photos)
By: Christopher Andreou
For the 8th Annual Stuart Hall Public Conversation, the Stuart Hall Foundation welcomed political theorist, writer, activist, independent…
28th May 2025 / Image
8th Annual Stuart Hall Public Conversation with Françoise Vergès (photos)
By: Christopher Andreou
For the 8th Annual Stuart Hall Public Conversation, the Stuart Hall Foundation welcomed political theorist, writer, activist, independent curator and political educator, Prof. Françoise Vergès as the keynote speaker. Taking place on Saturday 17th May at Conway Hall in London and online via livestream broadcast, the event inaugurated our 2025 programme, In Search of Common Ground.
Vergès’ keynote, titled ‘There Will Be No Future Without Seizing the Present’, considered how we might think across difference to construct a life-affirming politics in times of poly-crisis. The writer and activist posited that building common ground is building transnational solidarity, and urged against despair: “Let us think defeat as a chapter in the long fight for liberation and freedom.”
The keynote was preceded by a video excerpt from Stuart Hall’s Race, The Floating Signifier (1997) and an introductory address from SHF Executive Director Orsod Malik. After the keynote, Vergès was joined by Mohammed Elnaiem, Director of the Decolonial Centre, for a discussion and audience Q&A which further considered how we might understand Hall’s thinking on “a politics without guarantees”. A video recording of the keynote, discussion and audience Q&A will be published in the coming weeks.
The event also featured the premiere screening of ‘The Audacity of Our Skin’. Featuring poet and essayist Selina Nwulu reading her newly revisited version of the titular work to camera, the filmed performance was shot and edited by videographer Alice Kanako and commissioned by the Stuart Hall Foundation supported by Comic Relief.
Following the event, attendees were invited to congregate at an informal reception, where they discussed ideas with programme contributors and with each other. Plant-based South Asian food catered by Goodness Gracious Feast and drinks from the bar were made available, while Newham Bookshop held a stall with titles related to the programme on offer.
Skin Deep hosted a pop-up library at the back of the hall, continuing their efforts to make space for creative thinking in service of and beyond racial justice. The library of liberatory texts offered attendees the opportunity to relax and flip through back prints of the Skin Deep magazine, pick up their latest issue and delve into their sources of inspiration.
Supported by Comic Relief, the Hollick Family Foundation and the Paul Hamlyn Foundation, in collaboration with Conway Hall, Words of Colour and Pluto Press.
"I What does it Matter? “…you don’t worry about dirt in the garden…"
"I What does it Matter? “…you don’t worry about dirt in the garden…"
9th November 2025 / Article
The audacity of our skin
By: Selina Nwulu
I What does it Matter? “…you don’t worry about dirt in the garden because it belongs in the garden, but the moment you see dirt in the…
"I What does it Matter? “…you don’t worry about dirt in the garden…"
What does it Matter?
“…you don’t worry about dirt in the garden because it belongs in the garden, but the moment you see dirt in the bedroom you have to do something about it because it symbolically doesn’t belong there. And what you do with dirt in the bedroom is to cleanse it, you sweep it out, you restore order, you police boundaries, you know the hard and fast boundaries around what belongs and what doesn’t. Inside/Outside. Cultured/Uncivilised. Barbarous/Cultivated, and so on.”
– Stuart Hall discussing anthropologist Mary Douglas and her ‘matter out of place’ theory1
I remember an empty seat next to me on a crowded train. I remember walking easy in a quaint French village before being interrupted by the wrinkled nose of a passerby; tu viens d’où, alors? reminding me that foreign follows me like an old cloak lugging around my neck. I remember the breeze in Kerry’s voice telling me, I don’t like the really dark black people, but you’re alright, the way horror grew in my chest like ivy that day (its leaves have still not withered). I remember Year 6, the way my teacher shuddered at a picture of my profile. How I first understood revulsion without knowing its name, tucking my lips into themselves to make them smaller, if only for a little while. I remember the pointing, questions of whether I could read whilst holding a book, being looked at too intently to be thought beautiful but blushing all the same. I think this is a love, but the kind we have been warned to run from. It owns a gun, yet will not speak of its terror; obsessive in every curl of my hair, the bloom of my nose, the peaks and troughs of my breath. I’d tell you who I am, but you do not ask for my voice. You’ve already made up your mind, haven’t you?
II
Hostile, a definition:
Bitter; windrush citizen: here until your skin is no longer needed
Cold; migrants sleeping rough will be deported
Malicious; Yarl’s Wood is locking away too many hearts, will not let them heal
Militant; charter flights, expulsion as a brutal secret in handcuffs
Warlike; the threat, the swarm, the takeover, the Black-Brown invasion
Inhospitable; send them to Rwanda
Resentful; immigration is, after all, a very ’serious problem’
Unwilling; to see the truth in one another
Standoffish; do not fall in love with the wrong passport
Unwelcoming; the number of refugees dying to reach you
Afraid;
Afraid;
Afraid;
***
how long must we make a case for migration? recount the times it has carried this country on its neck so this nation could bask in the glory of its so called greatness? how loud should we chant our stories of beauty of struggle of grit? write all the ways we are lovely and useful across our faces before we become a hymn sheet singing of desperation? what time left to find a favourite cafè and a hand to hold? to lie on the grass in the park and spot clouds whose shapes remind us of the things we’ve lost? the loves we can’t get back?
III
and so, a riot, and so the beast
The riots. August 2024. Did I dream it? The rage, the terror, the fire?
Already, it’s being remembered as the riots of the ‘far right’. Far away – like a beast on a leash scowling in the distance. But I’ve seen riots, routine and much closer. Riots on my tv screen in racist debates over who gets to be here, riots in politician’s mouths, chewing and spitting immigrants out like a dirty word. A riot to my presence in the rooms I walk in and out of, protest to any sign I’m here, surviving, even experiencing joy. After all, the rule, no necessity, is that we must always be on the losing end of life. The idea that actually everyone could survive and experience joy, is supposedly a fairytale for the naïve. Instead, we remain trapped in the game of it- someone must win and another lose.
Weeks, even days, after the fury of the race riots, all of its wrath was shoved back into a box. The beast, clawing and wailing in the struggle, muffled by the pleasantries of nothing to see here! racism is in the past! because we’re all very civilised around here, right?
Eventually we left our houses once again. Funny how we knew what to do, how we’ve been rehearsing for emergency and violence every day in the before and after. This is the silent trade-off of what it is to live here, to exist within a spooling well of anger, unchecked and always brimming beneath the surface, hot and ready to boil over, flip the box wide open.
The rioters claimed enough was enough, to stop the boats, that something has to end
And I wanted to ask them, what? What is too much? Whose boats first descended where? What has to end, and where did this all begin? Trace it to its exact point.
Whose story are you telling? At what point did you get lost? Trace it to its exact point. Meet me there.
I know the truth to these questions means nothing. White terror is an inheritance, and the need to assert dominance over others, an heirloom that is passed on and on and on. Those who accept it, must do so faithfully, despite any truths or pleas to change.
I wanted to tell the rioters of the time they’re wasting, that they can’t hate us on the way to their own happiness. That what degrades us, degrades them – we are bound to one another whether any of us like it or not, and maybe, just maybe the thing that oppresses you, oppresses us too. That the violence and rage within them, can be fuel for something else, something good.
IV
Who are we to one another: a dirty secret
Here’s the thing we forget as we age; we’re not so different. Yes, there are some people whose clothes will never start a riot, those who will never know the grief of having a face made synonymous with a thug (the trauma of this deserves its own word). It is true that the things we experience are wrapped up in the life we are given. But when it comes to who we are, down to our most intimate core, aren’t we all just a bit lonely, scared for the storms to come? Asking questions no one truly has answers for?
Consider this; many of us did not want to get up this morning, some of us couldn’t. There is that dazed place we all inhabit seconds before fully waking that has no border, needs no passport. When the temperature drops to a chill, a body becomes its own shelter, shoulders round into a cave protecting itself. Some of our worse fears will come true, others won’t. We are all still chewing on words we wish we’d said to someone, somewhere, and longing to swallow back the ones we’ve said in temper. A first love will make our bodies speak languages we didn’t know we were fluent in and we all carry the heaviness of loss. How did we forget that we’re all deeply connected on some level?
Every day my phone scrolls through a news feed of angry people drunk on their ability to put others back in their place. There is a growing army of the righteous who tell us that there is a correct language to speak, an exact way to love, one acceptable altar to pray on. That falling out of this line means the terror of brute force is to be expected.
I watch a video of a man on the top deck of a bus screaming at another with a boiled kettle rage. He is all fist, spit in your face, my-grand-dad-didn’t-win-the war-so-your-kind-could-piss-it-all-away. I’m not sure it matters who the person on the receiving end of this venom is. In the video he is a chilling quiet, the kind many people of colour will recognise. It is a calculated silence, the kind where you are bargaining for your survival (and this too needs its own word). It does not matter whether he has a job he works hard at, the taxes he does or does not pay, if he tips generously, whether he is kind. That’s the point, isn’t it? Racism does not look for nuance, only the audacity of our skin.
I wonder if with a different lens these two could be lovers, could be sitting next to each other as strangers on the same top deck. They’d realise they were listening to the same music and how this one track makes them each feel a particular kind of giddy as the bass drops, how as the bus jolts a headphone would fall from each ear and they would turn to look at each other and they would smile.
V
What words have been left for us?
Words tell lies. This is difficult pill to swallow for a writer, but it is true, I think. We’ve inherited childish terms that shape the way we interact with one another. The words Black and White are at their heart nonsensical, a carrier of symbols and signs artificially packed with history and too much meaning. And yet, still, these labels are seared onto our backs. How we ourselves are living in a language that equates our colour to a shipwreck where all hope is lost. It is, after all, a dark time. Blackness, with all its pain and apparent innate knowledge of knife crime and squalor embedded under its skin, stands with its back to whiteness, which in turn, knows fresh air and the best schools to get into. How boring, but these terms of reference are as scorched in our minds as a national anthem. How then, should we come to understand ourselves with the language we’ve been given? To find meaning and truth in words that are the scraps of the dictionary?
Give us back our tongues and we’ll give you an answer. It may not be a sound you’ll recognise but it will be ours, all ours.
***
The Audacity of Our Skin was originally commissioned by Counterpoints Arts as part of the Who Are We festival at the Tate Modern in 2018. This revisited version was commissioned by the Stuart Hall Foundation in 2025, supported by Comic Relief.
1 https://www.mediaed.org/transcripts/Stuart-Hall-Race-the-Floating-Signifier-Transcript.pdf
SHF Peer Network Spring Workshop with Françoise Vergès
Friday 16th May 2025
Conway Hall, London
Ahead of the 8th Annual Stuart Hall Public Conversation, our network of creative and intellectual practitioners gathered at Conway Hall for the SHF Peer Network Spring Workshop. Joined by Professor Françoise Vergès, together they spent the day discussing each others’ practices, exchanging ideas and building connections.
Hosted by the Stuart Hall Foundation, the workshop began with lively introductions between the invited groups: members of the SHF Peer Network, the CoDE ECR (Centre on the Dynamics of Ethnicity Early Career Researcher) Network and scholars from YCEDE (Yorkshire Consortium for Equity in Doctoral Education). Françoise Vergès then led an open floor discussion on methods and strategies grounded in arts, history, activism, philosophy, postcolonial or feminist studies that may be deployed to address a broad, pertinent set of questions:
“How do the memories and history of past struggles for liberation and abolition help us to “build a politics that speaks to the specific moment in which we are working”? How do we formulate the common grounds that will build international solidarities and connect the struggles for climate justice, against racism, Islamophobia, imperialism, fascism and the rush to grab minerals and lands for extraction? How do we fight locally in a way that strengthen a transnational decolonial antiracist movement, without erasing differences?”
Workshop participants were also invited to attend the 8th Annual Stuart Hall Public Conversation with Françoise Vergès the next day. Eleanor Beaton, Stuart Hall Scholar at the University of Edinburgh (Scottish Graduate School of Social Sciences), shared her reflections on the experience here.
Supported by Comic Relief, the Hollick Family Foundation, the Paul Hamlyn Foundation, Conway Hall, CoDE and YCEDE.
Thank you to the SHF Trustees and Associates whose contributions made this event possible: Giorgia Doná, Michael Rustin and Nick Beech.
7th November 2025 / Images
SHF Peer Network Spring Workshop with Françoise Vergès (photos)
By: Tayyab Amin
7th November 2025 / Images
SHF Peer Network Spring Workshop with Françoise Vergès (photos)
By: Tayyab Amin
Ahead of the 8th Annual Stuart Hall Public Conversation in May 2025, our network of creative and intellectual practitioners gathered at Conway…
7th November 2025 / Image
SHF Peer Network Spring Workshop with Françoise Vergès (photos)
By: Tayyab Amin
Ahead of the 8th Annual Stuart Hall Public Conversation in May 2025, our network of creative and intellectual practitioners gathered at Conway Hall for the SHF Peer Network Spring Workshop. Joined by Professor Françoise Vergès, together they spent the day discussing each others’ practices, exchanging ideas and building connections.
Hosted by the Stuart Hall Foundation, the workshop began with lively introductions between the invited groups: members of the SHF Peer Network, the CoDE ECR (Centre on the Dynamics of Ethnicity Early Career Researcher) Network and scholars from YCEDE (Yorkshire Consortium for Equity in Doctoral Education). Françoise Vergès then led an open floor discussion on methods and strategies grounded in arts, history, activism, philosophy, postcolonial or feminist studies that may be deployed to address a broad, pertinent set of questions:
“How do the memories and history of past struggles for liberation and abolition help us to “build a politics that speaks to the specific moment in which we are working”? How do we formulate the common grounds that will build international solidarities and connect the struggles for climate justice, against racism, Islamophobia, imperialism, fascism and the rush to grab minerals and lands for extraction? How do we fight locally in a way that strengthen a transnational decolonial antiracist movement, without erasing differences?”
Workshop participants were also invited to attend the 8th Annual Stuart Hall Public Conversation with Françoise Vergès the next day. Eleanor Beaton, Stuart Hall Scholar at the University of Edinburgh (Scottish Graduate School of Social Sciences), shared her reflections on the experience here.
Supported by Comic Relief, the Hollick Family Foundation, the Paul Hamlyn Foundation, Conway Hall, CoDE and YCEDE.
Thank you to the SHF Trustees and Associates whose contributions made this event possible: Giorgia Doná, Michael Rustin and Nick Beech.
"Ahead of the 8th Annual Stuart Hall Public Conversation in May 2025, our…"
7th November 2025 / Article
Reflections: Eleanor Beaton on the SHF Peer Network Spring Workshop with Françoise Vergès
By: Eleanor Beaton
"Ahead of the 8th Annual Stuart Hall Public Conversation in May 2025, our…"
7th November 2025 / Article
Reflections: Eleanor Beaton on the SHF Peer Network Spring Workshop with Françoise Vergès
By: Eleanor Beaton
Ahead of the 8th Annual Stuart Hall Public Conversation in May 2025, our network of creative and intellectual practitioners gathered at Conway…
"Ahead of the 8th Annual Stuart Hall Public Conversation in May 2025, our…"
7th November 2025 / Article
Reflections: Eleanor Beaton on the SHF Peer Network Spring Workshop with Françoise Vergès
By: Eleanor Beaton
Ahead of the 8th Annual Stuart Hall Public Conversation in May 2025, our network of creative and intellectual practitioners gathered at Conway Hall for the SHF Peer Network Spring Workshop. Joined by Professor Françoise Vergès, together they spent the day discussing each others’ practices, exchanging ideas and building connections.
Eleanor Beaton, Stuart Hall Scholar at the University of Edinburgh (Scottish Graduate School of Social Sciences), shares her reflections on these events below, exploring themes of resilience, solidarity, and hope amid ongoing crises.
Wrapping up an afternoon spent thinking through how to build transnational solidarities across our differences in times of poly-crisis, Françoise Vergès drew upon the past to impart upon us a message of hope for the future – “the desire for emancipation,” she said, “will never die, across four centuries of slavery, there was always resistance.” In the present moment, marked by the genocide of the Palestinian people, by new and evermore violent wars waged in the name of U.S. imperialism, by the harshening of border regimes in Fortress Europe, and by the disastrous effects of climate breakdown, Françoise Vergès wove together the past and the present in order to imagine an alternative future, in order to teach us how we might continue in spite of it all, how we might, in her words, “confront finite disappointment with infinite hope.”
When I returned to Conway Hall this year to hear Françoise speak, one year after having joined Remi Joseph-Salisbury and Laura Connelly there for a workshop on anti-racist scholar activism, I was struck most clearly by a sense of déjà-vu. One year ago, I had come to London dejected, aimless, and confused. My work – with trans migrants, asylum-seekers, and refugees – had been derailed by institutional upsets which I no longer felt I had the energy to overcome. One year ago, I had all but given up. But in that room, filled to the brim as it was with like-minded thinkers, with academics, artists, and archivists, with my mentors and with my peers, with people who had faced the same challenges and setbacks as I had, and who, like myself, feel a burden of responsibility to the communities they work with, a burden which requires them to find paths forward, paths towards a better future. Last year, Erinma and Gabriel who sat either side of me, and all of my other peers in that room, they buoyed me, they reminded me of what it is we are trying to achieve with our work, they sent me back on the train home with the determination I needed to continue, and I did. A year on, I stepped into Conway Hall with new anxieties and new questions, as I prepare to start fieldwork in Germany, not entirely sure what I’m getting myself in for. Again, my fears were assuaged. Conversations with colleagues, with friends old and new, and with Françoise herself, they grounded me in the ‘why’ of the work, they brought back to the front of my mind that fickle affective drive which animates so much of what we do at the Stuart Hall Foundation, they kept me going, and they keep me going, in spite of it all.– Eleanor Beaton, June 2025
Reading the Crisis
June – September 2025
Online
The Reading the Crisis series asks: what kinds of tools and strategies are needed to confront this conjuncture? This online conversation series seeks to advance Stuart Hall’s thinking by analysing a curated selection of three texts in relation to present-day political formations.
In alignment with our 2025 programme theme, In Search of Common Ground, we chose three Stuart Hall texts featuring Hall in dialogue with Edward Said, CLR James and bell hooks. Each conversation, chaired by senior lecturer and former BBC Radio Senior Producer Aasiya Lodhi, aimed to form an online teach-in space dedicated to demonstrating how engaging in a conjunctural analysis can enrich artistic practice, deepen organising work, and academic study.
The first conversation took place on Wednesday 4th June 2025, with Brenna Bhandar and Hashem Abushama considering the state of contemporary discourse on Israel-Palestine through Hall’s open letter to Edward Said, titled ‘For Edward Said’ (2004). Read the transcript of the first conversation.
The second conversation took place on Monday 28th July 2025, with Houria Bouteldja and Lola Olufemi focusing on themes relating to anticolonial thought and action through a 1986 exchange between Stuart Hall and CLR James, produced by Mike Dibb. Read the transcript of the second conversation.
The third conversation took place on Tuesday 9th September 2025, with Gary Younge and Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor considering the nature of political organising using a discussion between bell hooks and Stuart Hall, published in the book Uncut Funk: A Contemplative Dialogue (2017). Read the transcript of the third conversation.
After the series was made available to view on demand online, we partnered with Hackney Libraries to produce a reading list of titles relating to and expanding upon Reading the Crisis.
We invited SHF Peer Network member and Reading the Crisis contributor Dr. Lola Olufemi to share her insights and reflections on participating in the series here.
Supported by Comic Relief, the Hollick Family Foundation and the Paul Hamlyn Foundation, in collaboration with Words of Colour, Pluto Press, Soundings, and Taylor & Francis.
9th November 2025 / Video
Reading the Crisis: ‘For Edward Said’ with Brenna Bhandar and Hashem Abushama
9th November 2025 / Video
Reading the Crisis: ‘For Edward Said’ with Brenna Bhandar and Hashem Abushama
The Reading the Crisis series asks: what kinds of tools and strategies are needed to confront this conjuncture? This online conversation series…
9th November 2025 / Video
Reading the Crisis: ‘For Edward Said’ with Brenna Bhandar and Hashem Abushama
The Reading the Crisis series asks: what kinds of tools and strategies are needed to confront this conjuncture? This online conversation series seeks to advance Stuart Hall’s thinking by analysing a curated selection of three texts in relation to present-day political formations. In alignment with our 2025 programme theme, In Search of Common Ground, we have chosen three Stuart Hall texts where Hall is in dialogue with Edward Said, CLR James and bell hooks. Each conversation, chaired by Aasiya Lodhi, aims to form an online teach-in space dedicated to demonstrating how engaging in a conjunctural analysis can enrich artistic practice, deepen organising work, and academic study.
The first conversation took place on Wednesday 4th June 2025, with Brenna Bhandar and Hashem Abushama considering the state of contemporary discourse on Israel-Palestine through Hall’s open letter to Edward Said, titled ‘For Edward Said’ (2004).
Read a transcript of the event here:
https://www.stuarthallfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/RTC-2025-1-Transcript.pdf
Supported by Comic Relief, the Hollick Family Foundation and the Paul Hamlyn Foundation, in collaboration with Words of Colour, Pluto Press, Soundings, and Taylor & Francis.
Reading the Crisis is part of the Stuart Hall Foundation’s In Search of Common Ground programme. Learn more about In Search of Common Ground by clicking here.
The Stuart Hall Foundation is pleased to be collaborating with Hackney Libraries to offer a reading list of books relating to the Reading the Crisis online conversation series. Feel free to access this list before, during or after the events to further explore some of the ideas that may be discussed:
https://www.lovehackney.uk/reading-lists/reading-the-crisis
9th November 2025 / Video
Reading the Crisis: ‘CLR James in Conversation with Stuart Hall’ ft. Houria Bouteldja & Lola Olufemi
9th November 2025 / Video
Reading the Crisis: ‘CLR James in Conversation with Stuart Hall’ ft. Houria Bouteldja & Lola Olufemi
The Reading the Crisis series asks: what kinds of tools and strategies are needed to confront this conjuncture? This online conversation series…
9th November 2025 / Video
Reading the Crisis: ‘CLR James in Conversation with Stuart Hall’ ft. Houria Bouteldja & Lola Olufemi
The Reading the Crisis series asks: what kinds of tools and strategies are needed to confront this conjuncture? This online conversation series seeks to advance Stuart Hall’s thinking by analysing a curated selection of three texts in relation to present-day political formations. In alignment with our 2025 programme theme, In Search of Common Ground, we have chosen three Stuart Hall texts where Hall is in dialogue with Edward Said, CLR James and bell hooks. Each conversation, chaired by Aasiya Lodhi, aims to form an online teach-in space dedicated to demonstrating how engaging in a conjunctural analysis can enrich artistic practice, deepen organising work, and academic study.
The second conversation took place on Monday 28th July 2025, with Houria Bouteldja and Lola Olufemi focusing on themes relating to anticolonial thought and action through a 1986 exchange between Stuart Hall and CLR James.
Read a transcript of the event here:
https://www.stuarthallfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/RTC-2025-2-Transcript.pdf
Supported by Comic Relief, the Hollick Family Foundation and the Paul Hamlyn Foundation, in collaboration with Words of Colour, Pluto Press, Soundings, and Taylor & Francis.
Reading the Crisis is part of the Stuart Hall Foundation’s In Search of Common Ground programme. Learn more about In Search of Common Ground by clicking here.
The Stuart Hall Foundation is pleased to be collaborating with Hackney Libraries to offer a reading list of books relating to the Reading the Crisis online conversation series. Feel free to access this list before, during or after the events to further explore some of the ideas that may be discussed:
https://www.lovehackney.uk/reading-lists/reading-the-crisis
9th November 2025 / Video
Reading the Crisis: ‘Uncut Funk: A Contemplative Dialogue’ ft. Gary Younge & Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor
9th November 2025 / Video
Reading the Crisis: ‘Uncut Funk: A Contemplative Dialogue’ ft. Gary Younge & Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor
The Reading the Crisis series asks: what kinds of tools and strategies are needed to confront this conjuncture? This online conversation series…
9th November 2025 / Video
Reading the Crisis: ‘Uncut Funk: A Contemplative Dialogue’ ft. Gary Younge & Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor
The Reading the Crisis series asks: what kinds of tools and strategies are needed to confront this conjuncture? This online conversation series seeks to advance Stuart Hall’s thinking by analysing a curated selection of three texts in relation to present-day political formations. In alignment with our 2025 programme theme, In Search of Common Ground, we have chosen three Stuart Hall texts where Hall is in dialogue with Edward Said, CLR James and bell hooks. Each conversation, chaired by Aasiya Lodhi, aims to form an online teach-in space dedicated to demonstrating how engaging in a conjunctural analysis can enrich artistic practice, deepen organising work, and academic study.
The third conversation took place on Tuesday 9th September 2025, with Gary Younge and Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor considering the nature of political organising using a discussion between bell hooks and Stuart Hall, published in the book, Uncut Funk: A Contemplative Dialogue (2017).
Read a transcript of the event here:
https://www.stuarthallfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/RTC-2025-3-Transcript.pdf
Supported by Comic Relief, the Hollick Family Foundation and the Paul Hamlyn Foundation, in collaboration with Words of Colour, Pluto Press, Soundings, and Taylor & Francis.
Reading the Crisis is part of the Stuart Hall Foundation’s In Search of Common Ground programme. Learn more about In Search of Common Ground by clicking here.
The Stuart Hall Foundation is pleased to be collaborating with Hackney Libraries to offer a reading list of books relating to the Reading the Crisis online conversation series. Feel free to access this list before, during or after the events to further explore some of the ideas that may be discussed:
https://www.lovehackney.uk/reading-lists/reading-the-crisis
"Writer, researcher, member of the Stuart Hall Foundation Peer Network and…"
"Writer, researcher, member of the Stuart Hall Foundation Peer Network and…"
8th November 2025 / Article
Reflections: Lola Olufemi on Reading the Crisis
By: Lola Olufemi
Writer, researcher, member of the Stuart Hall Foundation Peer Network and a speaker in this year’s In Search of Common Ground programme, Dr….
"Writer, researcher, member of the Stuart Hall Foundation Peer Network and…"
Writer, researcher, member of the Stuart Hall Foundation Peer Network and a speaker in this year’s In Search of Common Ground programme, Dr. Lola Olufemi shares insights and reflections on her experience participating in the Reading the Crisis conversation series.
I found the format of the Reading the Crisis series particularly generative – thinking about the present conjuncture through the threads left by an intellectual exchange between CLR James and Stuart Hall emphasised the importance of public dialogue as a means of combatting the anti-intellectualism of our increasingly fascist present. We must emphasise the connectivity of radical thinking across forms and arenas in order to reinvigorate the process of interpretative struggle that creates a culture. The dialogue allowed me to consider the creation of new strategies for attending to the present – particularly Houria’s insistence that notion of Gramsci’s notion of the ‘Integral State’, the relationship between the state and civil society as it operates in Europe is racialised and that this integral racial state “however tentacular, does not exhaust either the human being or their capacity to break the chains and enjoy their freedom.” Our conversation illuminated the responsibility of cultural workers, public intellectuals and academics to address the persistence of race as an ordering principle, a “floating signifier”, and the beating heart of the fascist project which is expressed through “common sense” objections to forms of migration in the United Kingdom. It also highlighted the affective dimensions of political education – if we can move people towards political consciousness, actions, affiliations and relationships which reject the myopic and alienated existence we have inherited from the neoliberal project of the last two decades through cultural interventions like this, we should not hesitate to do so. This is one part of a multi-pronged strategy.
I am always thinking about how we gain deeper understanding of the political legacies to which they belong and work in service to extend them in new ways. The necessity of making connections across time cannot be understated. My conversation with Houria made me realise that the exchange between CLR James and Stuart was not an archival relic, locked into the domain of the past; the insights they shared were pertinent to the present moment and were rearticulated in our conversation through a feminist lens. It reminded me of what I already know: we may live under different conditions but the political project remains the same.
– Lola Olufemi, September 2025
Further activities as part of In Search of Common Ground are to be announced. Additionally, the programme will continue our commitment to fostering critical dialogue through closed workshops and screenings for the SHF Peer Network of scholars, fellows, artists, and community partners.
_
Graphics designed by Reuxn Yao
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28th July 2025 / Video
Françoise Vergès: There Will Be No Future Without Seizing the Present
28th July 2025 / Video
Françoise Vergès: There Will Be No Future Without Seizing the Present
For the 8th Annual Stuart Hall Public Conversation, the Stuart Hall Foundation welcomed political theorist, writer, activist, independent...
For the 8th Annual Stuart Hall Public Conversation, the Stuart Hall Foundation welcomed political theorist, writer, activist, independent curator and political educator, Prof. Françoise Vergès as the keynote speaker. Taking place on Saturday 17th May at Conway Hall in London and online via livestream broadcast, the event inaugurated our 2025 programme, In Search of Common Ground.
Vergès’ keynote, titled ‘There Will Be No Future Without Seizing the Present’, considered how we might think across difference to construct a life-affirming politics in times of poly-crisis. The writer and activist posited that building common ground is building transnational solidarity, and urged against despair: “Let us think defeat as a chapter in the long fight for liberation and freedom.”
The keynote was preceded by a video excerpt from Stuart Hall’s Race, The Floating Signifier (1997) and an introductory address from SHF Executive Director Orsod Malik. After the keynote, Vergès was joined by Mohammed Elnaiem, Director of the Decolonial Centre, for a discussion and audience Q&A which further considered how we might understand Hall’s thinking on “a politics without guarantees”.
The event also featured the premiere screening of ‘The Audacity of Our Skin’. Featuring poet and essayist Selina Nwulu reading her newly revisited version of the titular work to camera, the filmed performance was shot and edited by videographer Alice Kanako and commissioned by the Stuart Hall Foundation supported by Comic Relief.
Following the event, attendees were invited to congregate at an informal reception, where they discussed ideas with programme contributors and with each other. Plant-based South Asian food catered by Goodness Gracious Feast and drinks from the bar were made available, while Newham Bookshop held a stall with titles related to the programme on offer.
Skin Deep hosted a pop-up library at the back of the hall, continuing their efforts to make space for creative thinking in service of and beyond racial justice. The library of liberatory texts offered attendees the opportunity to relax and flip through back prints of the Skin Deep magazine, pick up their latest issue and delve into their sources of inspiration.
Read a transcript of the event recording.
View photography from the event.
Supported by Comic Relief, the Hollick Family Foundation and the Paul Hamlyn Foundation, in collaboration with Conway Hall, Words of Colour and Pluto Press.
"I What does it Matter? “...you don’t worry about dirt in the garden..."
"I What does it Matter? “...you don’t worry about dirt in the garden..."
9th November 2025 / Article
The audacity of our skin
By: Selina Nwulu
I What does it Matter? “...you don’t worry about dirt in the garden because it belongs in the garden, but the moment you see dirt in the...
"I What does it Matter? “...you don’t worry about dirt in the garden..."
What does it Matter?
“…you don’t worry about dirt in the garden because it belongs in the garden, but the moment you see dirt in the bedroom you have to do something about it because it symbolically doesn’t belong there. And what you do with dirt in the bedroom is to cleanse it, you sweep it out, you restore order, you police boundaries, you know the hard and fast boundaries around what belongs and what doesn’t. Inside/Outside. Cultured/Uncivilised. Barbarous/Cultivated, and so on.”
– Stuart Hall discussing anthropologist Mary Douglas and her ‘matter out of place’ theory1
I remember an empty seat next to me on a crowded train. I remember walking easy in a quaint French village before being interrupted by the wrinkled nose of a passerby; tu viens d’où, alors? reminding me that foreign follows me like an old cloak lugging around my neck. I remember the breeze in Kerry’s voice telling me, I don’t like the really dark black people, but you’re alright, the way horror grew in my chest like ivy that day (its leaves have still not withered). I remember Year 6, the way my teacher shuddered at a picture of my profile. How I first understood revulsion without knowing its name, tucking my lips into themselves to make them smaller, if only for a little while. I remember the pointing, questions of whether I could read whilst holding a book, being looked at too intently to be thought beautiful but blushing all the same. I think this is a love, but the kind we have been warned to run from. It owns a gun, yet will not speak of its terror; obsessive in every curl of my hair, the bloom of my nose, the peaks and troughs of my breath. I’d tell you who I am, but you do not ask for my voice. You’ve already made up your mind, haven’t you?
II
Hostile, a definition:
Bitter; windrush citizen: here until your skin is no longer needed
Cold; migrants sleeping rough will be deported
Malicious; Yarl’s Wood is locking away too many hearts, will not let them heal
Militant; charter flights, expulsion as a brutal secret in handcuffs
Warlike; the threat, the swarm, the takeover, the Black-Brown invasion
Inhospitable; send them to Rwanda
Resentful; immigration is, after all, a very ’serious problem’
Unwilling; to see the truth in one another
Standoffish; do not fall in love with the wrong passport
Unwelcoming; the number of refugees dying to reach you
Afraid;
Afraid;
Afraid;
***
how long must we make a case for migration? recount the times it has carried this country on its neck so this nation could bask in the glory of its so called greatness? how loud should we chant our stories of beauty of struggle of grit? write all the ways we are lovely and useful across our faces before we become a hymn sheet singing of desperation? what time left to find a favourite cafè and a hand to hold? to lie on the grass in the park and spot clouds whose shapes remind us of the things we’ve lost? the loves we can’t get back?
III
and so, a riot, and so the beast
The riots. August 2024. Did I dream it? The rage, the terror, the fire?
Already, it’s being remembered as the riots of the ‘far right’. Far away – like a beast on a leash scowling in the distance. But I’ve seen riots, routine and much closer. Riots on my tv screen in racist debates over who gets to be here, riots in politician’s mouths, chewing and spitting immigrants out like a dirty word. A riot to my presence in the rooms I walk in and out of, protest to any sign I’m here, surviving, even experiencing joy. After all, the rule, no necessity, is that we must always be on the losing end of life. The idea that actually everyone could survive and experience joy, is supposedly a fairytale for the naïve. Instead, we remain trapped in the game of it- someone must win and another lose.
Weeks, even days, after the fury of the race riots, all of its wrath was shoved back into a box. The beast, clawing and wailing in the struggle, muffled by the pleasantries of nothing to see here! racism is in the past! because we’re all very civilised around here, right?
Eventually we left our houses once again. Funny how we knew what to do, how we’ve been rehearsing for emergency and violence every day in the before and after. This is the silent trade-off of what it is to live here, to exist within a spooling well of anger, unchecked and always brimming beneath the surface, hot and ready to boil over, flip the box wide open.
The rioters claimed enough was enough, to stop the boats, that something has to end
And I wanted to ask them, what? What is too much? Whose boats first descended where? What has to end, and where did this all begin? Trace it to its exact point.
Whose story are you telling? At what point did you get lost? Trace it to its exact point. Meet me there.
I know the truth to these questions means nothing. White terror is an inheritance, and the need to assert dominance over others, an heirloom that is passed on and on and on. Those who accept it, must do so faithfully, despite any truths or pleas to change.
I wanted to tell the rioters of the time they’re wasting, that they can’t hate us on the way to their own happiness. That what degrades us, degrades them – we are bound to one another whether any of us like it or not, and maybe, just maybe the thing that oppresses you, oppresses us too. That the violence and rage within them, can be fuel for something else, something good.
IV
Who are we to one another: a dirty secret
Here’s the thing we forget as we age; we’re not so different. Yes, there are some people whose clothes will never start a riot, those who will never know the grief of having a face made synonymous with a thug (the trauma of this deserves its own word). It is true that the things we experience are wrapped up in the life we are given. But when it comes to who we are, down to our most intimate core, aren’t we all just a bit lonely, scared for the storms to come? Asking questions no one truly has answers for?
Consider this; many of us did not want to get up this morning, some of us couldn’t. There is that dazed place we all inhabit seconds before fully waking that has no border, needs no passport. When the temperature drops to a chill, a body becomes its own shelter, shoulders round into a cave protecting itself. Some of our worse fears will come true, others won’t. We are all still chewing on words we wish we’d said to someone, somewhere, and longing to swallow back the ones we’ve said in temper. A first love will make our bodies speak languages we didn’t know we were fluent in and we all carry the heaviness of loss. How did we forget that we’re all deeply connected on some level?
Every day my phone scrolls through a news feed of angry people drunk on their ability to put others back in their place. There is a growing army of the righteous who tell us that there is a correct language to speak, an exact way to love, one acceptable altar to pray on. That falling out of this line means the terror of brute force is to be expected.
I watch a video of a man on the top deck of a bus screaming at another with a boiled kettle rage. He is all fist, spit in your face, my-grand-dad-didn’t-win-the war-so-your-kind-could-piss-it-all-away. I’m not sure it matters who the person on the receiving end of this venom is. In the video he is a chilling quiet, the kind many people of colour will recognise. It is a calculated silence, the kind where you are bargaining for your survival (and this too needs its own word). It does not matter whether he has a job he works hard at, the taxes he does or does not pay, if he tips generously, whether he is kind. That’s the point, isn’t it? Racism does not look for nuance, only the audacity of our skin.
I wonder if with a different lens these two could be lovers, could be sitting next to each other as strangers on the same top deck. They’d realise they were listening to the same music and how this one track makes them each feel a particular kind of giddy as the bass drops, how as the bus jolts a headphone would fall from each ear and they would turn to look at each other and they would smile.
V
What words have been left for us?
Words tell lies. This is difficult pill to swallow for a writer, but it is true, I think. We’ve inherited childish terms that shape the way we interact with one another. The words Black and White are at their heart nonsensical, a carrier of symbols and signs artificially packed with history and too much meaning. And yet, still, these labels are seared onto our backs. How we ourselves are living in a language that equates our colour to a shipwreck where all hope is lost. It is, after all, a dark time. Blackness, with all its pain and apparent innate knowledge of knife crime and squalor embedded under its skin, stands with its back to whiteness, which in turn, knows fresh air and the best schools to get into. How boring, but these terms of reference are as scorched in our minds as a national anthem. How then, should we come to understand ourselves with the language we’ve been given? To find meaning and truth in words that are the scraps of the dictionary?
Give us back our tongues and we’ll give you an answer. It may not be a sound you’ll recognise but it will be ours, all ours.
***
The Audacity of Our Skin was originally commissioned by Counterpoints Arts as part of the Who Are We festival at the Tate Modern in 2018. This revisited version was commissioned by the Stuart Hall Foundation in 2025, supported by Comic Relief.
1 https://www.mediaed.org/transcripts/Stuart-Hall-Race-the-Floating-Signifier-Transcript.pdf
9th November 2025 / Video
Reading the Crisis: 'For Edward Said' with Brenna Bhandar and Hashem Abushama
9th November 2025 / Video
Reading the Crisis: 'For Edward Said' with Brenna Bhandar and Hashem Abushama
The Reading the Crisis series asks: what kinds of tools and strategies are needed to confront this conjuncture? This online conversation series...
9th November 2025 / Video
Reading the Crisis: 'For Edward Said' with Brenna Bhandar and Hashem Abushama
The Reading the Crisis series asks: what kinds of tools and strategies are needed to confront this conjuncture? This online conversation series seeks to advance Stuart Hall’s thinking by analysing a curated selection of three texts in relation to present-day political formations. In alignment with our 2025 programme theme, In Search of Common Ground, we have chosen three Stuart Hall texts where Hall is in dialogue with Edward Said, CLR James and bell hooks. Each conversation, chaired by Aasiya Lodhi, aims to form an online teach-in space dedicated to demonstrating how engaging in a conjunctural analysis can enrich artistic practice, deepen organising work, and academic study.
The first conversation took place on Wednesday 4th June 2025, with Brenna Bhandar and Hashem Abushama considering the state of contemporary discourse on Israel-Palestine through Hall’s open letter to Edward Said, titled ‘For Edward Said’ (2004).
Read a transcript of the event here:
https://www.stuarthallfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/RTC-2025-1-Transcript.pdf
Supported by Comic Relief, the Hollick Family Foundation and the Paul Hamlyn Foundation, in collaboration with Words of Colour, Pluto Press, Soundings, and Taylor & Francis.
Reading the Crisis is part of the Stuart Hall Foundation’s In Search of Common Ground programme. Learn more about In Search of Common Ground by clicking here.
The Stuart Hall Foundation is pleased to be collaborating with Hackney Libraries to offer a reading list of books relating to the Reading the Crisis online conversation series. Feel free to access this list before, during or after the events to further explore some of the ideas that may be discussed:
https://www.lovehackney.uk/reading-lists/reading-the-crisis
"Writer, researcher, member of the Stuart Hall Foundation Peer Network and..."
"Writer, researcher, member of the Stuart Hall Foundation Peer Network and..."
8th November 2025 / Article
Reflections: Lola Olufemi on Reading the Crisis
By: Lola Olufemi
Writer, researcher, member of the Stuart Hall Foundation Peer Network and a speaker in this year's In Search of Common Ground programme, Dr....
"Writer, researcher, member of the Stuart Hall Foundation Peer Network and..."
Writer, researcher, member of the Stuart Hall Foundation Peer Network and a speaker in this year’s In Search of Common Ground programme, Dr. Lola Olufemi shares insights and reflections on her experience participating in the Reading the Crisis conversation series.
I found the format of the Reading the Crisis series particularly generative – thinking about the present conjuncture through the threads left by an intellectual exchange between CLR James and Stuart Hall emphasised the importance of public dialogue as a means of combatting the anti-intellectualism of our increasingly fascist present. We must emphasise the connectivity of radical thinking across forms and arenas in order to reinvigorate the process of interpretative struggle that creates a culture. The dialogue allowed me to consider the creation of new strategies for attending to the present – particularly Houria’s insistence that notion of Gramsci’s notion of the ‘Integral State’, the relationship between the state and civil society as it operates in Europe is racialised and that this integral racial state “however tentacular, does not exhaust either the human being or their capacity to break the chains and enjoy their freedom.” Our conversation illuminated the responsibility of cultural workers, public intellectuals and academics to address the persistence of race as an ordering principle, a “floating signifier”, and the beating heart of the fascist project which is expressed through “common sense” objections to forms of migration in the United Kingdom. It also highlighted the affective dimensions of political education – if we can move people towards political consciousness, actions, affiliations and relationships which reject the myopic and alienated existence we have inherited from the neoliberal project of the last two decades through cultural interventions like this, we should not hesitate to do so. This is one part of a multi-pronged strategy.
I am always thinking about how we gain deeper understanding of the political legacies to which they belong and work in service to extend them in new ways. The necessity of making connections across time cannot be understated. My conversation with Houria made me realise that the exchange between CLR James and Stuart was not an archival relic, locked into the domain of the past; the insights they shared were pertinent to the present moment and were rearticulated in our conversation through a feminist lens. It reminded me of what I already know: we may live under different conditions but the political project remains the same.
– Lola Olufemi, September 2025
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